On The Banality Of Cruelty
Hamas’ cruel assault on Israeli and foreign civilians is the byproduct atrocity of nearly a century of cyclical violence, but it marks a new line of cruelty that must be met with restraint.
Hello, friends,
Nothing exists in a vacuum, everything has a history, prior decisions play into the present day, and negativity carries momentum. My studies of history aren’t nearly as deep as many, but they’ve taught me that the engines of violence have self-perpetuating cycles that must be broken - but outside voices rarely penetrate the disquieting grinding of living Human bodies into dead corpses.
For these reasons, it’s relatively rare that I write about armed conflict in this publication. But when I’m horrified by real-world events, I sometimes like to write my reaction and thoughts, even though I’m not an expert. Here’s my rationale:
It’s partly that I don’t have much first-hand knowledge of violence. Outside from a couple fist-fights in my younger days, I’ve never been in mortal peril like the millions of people around the world whose lives may end tonight have been.
It’s partly that I don’t have first-hand exposure to the pain in the places where pain is prominent. I don’t live in Gaza, I don’t live in Israel, I don’t live in the West Bank or Lebanon. I don’t have family that I know of which does. It’s the same for Ukraine and Russia; I know few people even tangentially affected by it.
I want to be up-front with these disclosures so that when I write about the only real big news story of this week, I can do so in an honest fashion wherein you, dear reader, can understand that I am coming at this from a relatively detached position. I don’t know how the terror victim feels, other than my own memories of 9/11 as a New Yorker within smoke-observing distance of the city. I don’t know how the child growing up under airstrikes feels. At best, I’ve read what such people have written about their plights, and that alone is enough to bring tears.
This entire preamble exists so that when I make this call for cooler heads to prevail - when I make a call for peace - it’s known that I’m coming at this from an external position, with an eye towards the way historical cycles of violence perpetuate until they are, by one or both parties, actively broken - even at great cost to the ones breaking it.
The October 7th Atrocity & Its Aftermath
By this point, an astute reader has pretty much figured out that I’m talking about the Hamas attack on Israel which took place on October 7th, 2023. At the time I’m writing (Wednesday, October 11th), the truth is that there’s a great deal of information that’s unknown, unconfirmed, and unresolved. Here’s the simplest breakdown I can come up with:
Hamas, a terrorist group masquerading as the government of the Gaza Strip, launched an extraordinarily large barrage of rockets towards Israeli cities. This attack overwhelmed Israel’s anti-missile defense system, the Iron Dome, leading to civilian casualties. Under the cover of this attack, Hamas terrorists invaded numerous adjacent Israeli communities, as well as a nearby music festival, and began executing, raping, and kidnapping defenseless civilians. Over a thousand such people are dead, with many more still held captive.
To be clear:
This was not an act of resistance. This was not an act of self-defense. If you believe it was, then go back and re-read what I just wrote. Do this as many times as you need to. Picture yourself at a music festival, one dedicated to freedom, and picture yourself…Well, just re-read what I wrote again and again until it clicks in your head that this was not an act of noble resistance to colonization.
Since then, Israel has declared war on Hamas. For this, they are blameless: This is the only acceptable response to such an atrocity.
However, Israel’s decisions on how it chooses to prosecute its war are open to question, because even the color of war does not excuse certain behaviors that, sadly, are taking place.
Here’s an example: Gaza is inhabited by somewhere over two million people. Approximately half of those people - call it one million of them - are under the age of 18. Israel has shut off two million peoples’ access to water. That sure smacks of a collective punishment, I.E. a war crime, and needs to be spoken out against. While I’m here making tweaks to this article on Thursday, October 12th, let me add that it sure as hell looks like Israel used white phosphorus in Gaza - another war crime.
Giving October 7th Historical Context
…Look, I might have studied this conflict a bit over the years, but I’m far from an expert. I’m not setting out to make you an expert, either. We’re talking about thousands of years of history, here. I’m just trying to give you the barest contextual information necessary. I will be leaving things out, and they will be important things. If you find yourself angry I left something vital out, mention it politely in the comments.
The violent history of this region certainly doesn’t begin in the 1940’s (See also: The Crusades), but in the 1940’s the modern state of Israel was created and granted land controlled by the British Empire. That land, mind you, was carved from the British Mandate of Palestine, which was already home to the Palestinian people who had lived there for quite some time.
That sort of thing doesn’t exactly make for fast friendships.
Numerous wars were fought over the land granted to Israel. There are reasonable arguments on behalf of both sides, here: “Where else were we supposed to go after the Holocaust, other than the land we were once driven out of?” is a good question, as is, “Why did a foreign empire give you our land, thus driving us out?” My question might be, “Why would it be so hard for you to share?” But, again, I am an outsider.
Let’s fast-forward a bit.
October 7th is nearly the exact date that the Yom Kippur War was launched in 1973, which was an(other) attempt by Arab nations to exterminate Israel from the world. That has to be borne in mind when viewing this situation.
By even that point, Israel as a fact-of-life had existed for over two decades. An entire generation had lived there. Israel fought back and more-or-less won, as it tended to do in these wars. The Arab-Israeli peace process that followed restored some Israeli-occupied lands to their original holders, but did not effectively create a second state out of occupied Palestinian lands.
An entire lifetime of barely-contained chaos followed this. There were uprisings, rockets lobbed, airstrikes levied, and settlements carved out of occupied land. There are those who will focus on each tit for tat, each malicious act; there are also those who are invested that will excuse their sides’ actions while condemning the others.
I’m not going to attempt to do that. Instead, I’ll shed a little light on the status quo going into October 7th, as I know that will not be the status-quo at the end of this war.
The Previous Status-Quo of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Israeli’s government was divided over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s attempts at judicial “reform,” which fueled nationwide protests that I’d written about, before. Israel’s government was unstable, with numerous elections taking place in a brief window of time. The idea here is that Israel was susceptible to change - and that meant that the Palestinian cause (not, may I stress, the Hamas cause) was starting to get more and more prominent. Israel’s murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was a significant news story, while the Israeli news agency Hareetz was talking about Israel’s own, lesser-scale atrocities such as cementing over Palestinian water wells as part of what has been described by Israeli media as an ethnic cleansing campaign. For more, here’s video of an Israeli stealing a Palestinian’s house.
In short, public opinion was quickly turning against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
Hamas undid all of that in one night. So let’s talk about them for a minute.
Hamas is a terrorist organization founded in 1987, splintering off of the larger Muslim Brotherhood. When Hamas’ political competition Fatah swore off violence in the early 1990’s, Hamas did no such thing. Hamas continued to egg on armed resistance.
A word on armed resistance: I get it. I really do. When your brethren are being purged from their ancestral lands, the impulse to defend oneself militarily makes sense. I get it. However, refer back to the paragraph I urged those who misunderstood what happened here to re-read. Armed resistance is a strategy such as targeting occupier military convoys, not raping and slaughtering civilians. Again: What Hamas did on October 7th, 2023 is not armed resistance.
Anyway, Hamas. Hamas put itself forward as a contender for political elections in the Gaza Strip in 2006. It won. Israel effectively de-occupied Gaza, though it maintained significant power over the Strip vis-a-vis food, water and electricity. Meanwhile, Hamas launched rockets and other deadly attacks at Israel whenever it felt like, sparking various little battles here and there.
Now, notice the year I just referenced: 2006. Notice that about 50% of Gaza is under the age of 18. The elections were 17 years ago. That means about half of Gazans were not even alive to vote Hamas into power. More than half were most definitely too young to vote in that election, meaning Hamas does not have the authentic consent of the people it governs
One more reason why collective punishment is unacceptable, eh?
So What Is The Right Path Forward?
Hamas is unacceptable to Israel, and I understand why. Hamas must be eradicated, and I understand why. That likely means that Israel is going to re-occupy Gaza, and there’s probably nothing that can be done to stop that.
But in the process, Israel needs to be judicious with its use of air power. To my understanding, they’ve been using a process called “Roof-Knocking,” telegraphing which buildings it plans to level and giving civilians a chance to evacuate. This is reasonable enough: If a building is used to, say, launch rockets, well, it’s not going to stay standing for long. That’s how self-defense works.
With that said, I reiterate that Israel has full control over whether or not the people of Gaza have access to food and water. It must assure that the civilians in Gaza don’t starve or die of dehydration. If it turns around and kills a bunch of civilians by withholding these things, it will only lead to a new generation of Palestinians growing up to hate Israel even more, and will continue the cycle of violence.
The U.S. is trying to negotiate Humanitarian “Green Corridors” to allow civilians to evacuate while Israel plans out its likely ground invasion of Gaza. A ground invasion is likely the only means by which to eliminate Hamas, so it’ll probably happen, and I encourage Israel to work with Egypt and the U.S. to evacuate as many civilians as possible before that nightmare comes to pass.
Lastly, I want everyone to remember there are essentially four forces at work, here: The Israeli Government, Hamas, the Israeli people, and the Palestinian people. The first two are fighting each other, but the latter two must be protected from the first two’s violence.
Otherwise, the cycles of violence will continue.
And that is the banality of cruelty, my friends: It is so simple.
Cruelty Is An Endless Cycle - Until It’s Broken.
I’m a bit of a doom-scroller, so I get it, but the number of people in Reddit’s r/worldnews threads asking for livestreams of Gaza’s skyline and complaining that they aren’t seeing things explode was astounding. I say this even though I, too, watched the cameras for a little while. I figured that if nothing else, I could bear witness to what was happening. I could glean some understanding.
Not all feedback has been so simple.
There was a now-infamous and now-concealed-from-wider-view tweet (ahh, but still discoverable with the right Google-fu) talking about how the practice of decolonization necessarily required that this genocidal violence from Hamas was part of the process. The original poster implied that the violence was not only necessary, but a good thing. Oh, and she called the dead “losers,” which was…Quaint.
This is a reply to that tweet, a reply that I agreed with. It’s possible the original poster was just trolling, seeking attention and to do harm with words alone, but if not? Well, let’s just say that either way, a message was conveyed, and people will be thinking twice before they support decolonization. What that person said was evil. What took place on October 7th was not valiant armed resistance against colonialism.
It was barbarity.
When queried about civilian casualties in Gaza, former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett exploded in anger when asked about babies in incubators. “We’re fighting Nazis!” was his defense - and, yes, Nazis are bad, and must be fought. But history does not speak kindly of those who carpet-bombed Dresden, Cologne, and Tokyo. The devastation of Gaza is equally unacceptable, even if Israel is doing it in as safe a way as they can manage. World War Two is a terrible standard to hold people up to. Would Bennett also drop nuclear weapons on Gaza if it meant ending Hamas, as World War Two logic dictated?
Maybe some day I’ll write about how a younger Jesse viewed the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as wartime necessities, since Today-Jesse doesn’t - it is a stance I regret. And for Bennett to say others are welcome to bring Gaza the resources that Israel was denying them? Consider that there has been a long-standing blockade of Gaza, itself an act of war if one views Gaza as an independent nation.
It more than seems unfair to ask the victim of a pogrom to show restraint. It is. If someone punched me in the face and I (with my scrawny, in-bad-shape body) retaliated by causing them critical or even fatal injuries, would I be blamed? Well, maybe. The law indicates that I’m responsible for meeting the force thrown against me with a reasonable response. I can’t respond to being slapped in the face with killing a person.
But the only way this cycle of violence ends is for one party, after an atrocity, to measure their response so that they don’t go overboard and create a whole new legion of willing participants in the violence. Israel’s best interests are served by treating Gazan lives with care. Like I said earlier, the Israeli government is at war with Hamas, and rightly so from Israel’s perspective. But that means that the Israeli and Palestinian people should be left out of this as much as possible, and it falls on both sides to do that. Since we know Hamas is essentially holding “their own” people hostage - because Hamas are barbaric monsters - it falls on Israel to do the rescuing.
That won’t be easy. It means less bombing. It means less military force used in certain situations.
As of writing this conclusion around 2AM on Friday, Israel has ordered over one million people - half of Gaza - to evacuate towards the southernmost half of the city. This is, flatly, impossible. Even if a high percentage of evacuation is achieved, what is their goal? Are they going to carpet-bomb Gaza? Would that even help fight Hamas, who will likely be under-ground in Gaza’s many tunnels, or would they up the ante to bunker-busters and ensure that’s not a possibility? What about the Hamas fighters who inevitably put on civilian clothes and go hide with the rest? Especially given that Hamas has asked civilians to stay at their homes?
I don’t see this ending well.
As a final thought, many have compared this to the American experience in 9/11. It’s not, those are never one-to-one comparisons, but as temporarily-explored analogy it makes a lot of sense. The problem is that our reaction was to invade Afghanistan (which made some sense), stay there for twenty years (which didn’t), invade Iraq (which was based on a lie and Nancy Pelosi should’ve impeached Bush for it back then), and establish our own war-crimes including our very own torture facility at GITMO, which Ron DeSantis worked at.
Maybe Israel can learn a thing or two from us, and not make the same mistakes we did.
One can hope.
In Other News…
Honestly, you’ve already read about 2,700 words. That’s huge. I’m only going to point out that in a crisis like this, the Republicans cannot begin to organize effectively and, in fact, are working against U.S. interests in this situation.
First, the House of Representatives can’t pick a speaker. That means that the House cannot get together to pass a government funding bill (remember, the last funding bill was only for 45 days), let alone pass any kind of funding for aid to Israel, Ukraine, the Palestinian people, or the like.
Second, Senator Rand Paul - apparently a Hamas supporter? - is materially aiding terrorists by keeping us from appointing ambassadors to, well, pretty much the entire region. I wonder why?
Third, Senator Tommy Tuberville - also a Hamas supporter? - is materially aiding terrorists by refusing to allow the U.S. government to appoint people to high-ranking military positions. I wonder why?
There, that’s three separate “In Other News” articles.
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.